October 2026 links

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1. Here’s Matt Yglesias:

Yglesias is correct, but only because almost no one actually read the China Shock paper, which argued that the US actually benefited from China trade.

1. reports:

A subsidized housing project meets a segregation argument
Residents of Mill Valley, Calif., the Bay Area’s whitest town, sued to block a unanimously approved 45-unit affordable-housing project on city-owned land, arguing that it would worsen segregation, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

And this:

Further south, a plan to build 398 homes at a country club in Los Angeles stalled in August after city planners determined that the golf course qualifies as a mountain lion habitat, forcing the developer to undergo the city’s more arduous approval process rather than use a state law designed to fast-track housing on commercial land, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Hopeless.

1. The Financial Times reports that China’s battery storage is booming:

The sector’s rapid growth is strengthening China’s position as the dominant force in low-carbon energy, compounding opportunities for Chinese companies in adjacent markets such as wind and solar generation equipment. It is also changing power systems around the world. “We see, in all our scenarios, transitions towards systems based on renewable energy,” says Brent Wanner, head of the power sector unit at the IEA, whose long-term energy market modelling is closely watched by governments and investors. “Battery storage is kind of the glue that can hold [such systems] together.” . . .

As a result of the state’s drive, China’s battery storage capacity expanded from 2.4 gigawatts in 2020 to more than 140GW at the end of last year, according to the Energy Institute, an industry membership body. In the first half of this year, coal’s share of Chinese power generation fell below 50 per cent for the first time ever.

1. The US has been committing what looks to some like war crimes. Here’s Reason magazine:

As of late August 2026, U.S. forces had used missiles to destroy boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific 68 times under Trump's orders, remotely killing 227 people in cold blood without any semblance of due process. . . . After a missile tore apart the boat, killing nine people, “two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.” The Special Operations commander overseeing the operation, Adm. Frank M. Bradley, then “ordered a second strike,” and “the two men were blown apart in the water.”On its face, that order looked like a war crime, and so did the decision to obey it. “Members of the armed forces must refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit law of war violations,” the Defense Department’s law of war manual says. “For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”

I don’t see these as war crimes, because we are not at war with the people being attacked. This looks much more like garden variety murder:

If the United States were in fact engaged in a "non-international armed conflict," a group of former military lawyers said in November 2025, a policy of killing everyone aboard each boat would be "clearly illegal under international law." And if there is no such conflict, the Former JAGs Working Group added, "orders to kill helpless civilians clinging to the wreckage of a vessel our military destroyed would subject everyone from [the defense secretary] down to the individual who pulled the trigger to prosecution under U.S. law for murder."

If we are going to sell our souls to the devil, it would be nice to at least get something of value in return. Alas, that doesn’t seem to have happened:

If Trump were putting a significant dent in the cocaine supply (or, more plausibly, imposing new costs that traffickers felt compelled to recoup by charging more), you would expect retail prices to rise. But according to University of North Carolina drug researcher Nabarun Dasgupta, the Times said, “street prices for cocaine” in “many U.S. cities” remained “about where they were before the boat strikes began.”Pressure from the boat strikes might also be reflected in adulteration of cocaine with cheaper substances such as levamisole and lidocaine. But Dasgupta reported that adulteration rates in 2026 were, if anything, a bit lower than in 2025.A reduced supply of cocaine also should be reflected in the substances detected after drug-related deaths. According to provisional estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, deaths involving cocaine fell slightly in early 2025 but remained flat during the six months after the boat strikes began.

1. A few months back I did a post entitled “Who’s Afraid of the Money Supply?” I discussed the weird unwillingness of pundits to explain that inflation is caused by printing too much money—even in non-supply shock cases where money is clearly the only important factor. A recent Economist story entitled Turkey’s battle against inflation caught my attention:

Annual inflation in Turkey cooled to 29.7% in September, its fourth month of slowing price growth, data published on Monday showed. Yet inflation remains stubbornly high.The country has raised inflation projections for 2026 twice this year, to 28%. The central bank’s “interim target” is 24%. Turkey’s finance minister, Mehmet Simsek, reckons that the annual inflation rate—now above 30%—would be seven percentage points lower had America not gone to war with Iran.

Why does the media keep doing this? Here’s the Turkish currency stock, which rose 100X between 2001 and 2023, an annual rate of 23.3%:

And here’s Turkey’s nominal GDP, which rose 110X between 2001 and 2023, an annual rate of 23.8%

So, currency rose 23.3%/year and NGDP rose by 23.8%/year—an amazing coincidence!

Because Turkey’s real GDP rose by only 5.5%/year, that nominal growth led to chronically high inflation. Perhaps Turkey might have a bit more success in their “battle” against inflation if they were to slow down the printing presses. And perhaps the media might begin reporting the actual cause of chronically high inflation—printing lots of money!

And no, Turkey does not have a high public debt, so this isn’t one of those “fiscal theory of the price level” cases. They simply print lots of money!

1. Carl recently left this comment:

FYI...I asked Gemini "Does NGDP Level Targeting risk creating pro-cyclical monetary policy if capital income is increasing faster than wages?" and got back this as part of my answer: "This exact dynamic has led prominent market monetarists like Scott Sumner to note (https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/some-of-the-best-ideas-are-wrong?st_source=ai_mode) that a tech or corporate profit boom can distort NGDP, causing overall income numbers to rise rapidly even as average hourly earnings growth slows."

I’ve argued that worries about China stealing our intellectual property are wildly overblown. IP laws are far too restrictive. So how do I feel about Google taking my ideas without compensation? I’m fine with it. But I’m more interested in what you think. How do people who worry about Chinese AIs taking American data feel about Google taking my intellectual work without compensation?

1. Here’s Liz Wolfe of Reason magazine:

The administration of justice should not be perverted into sport or entertainment. Death-penalty-as-deterrent types might welcome this, but I worry what it says about us as a society if large numbers of us tune in to watch. Does this actually convince people with violent tendencies to turn away from violence because the consequences are so severe? Or does it deaden us, allowing us to grow more accustomed to seeing people’s final moments on camera?“A public execution is giving a terrorist exactly what he wants: publicity,” writes Reason‘s Robby Soave on X. “They fantasize about being martyred like this, in front of a crowd (and a live TV audience???). It’s ISIS recruitment slop.”

1. The Economist has an extremely unpersuasive critique of effective altruism:

Yet the critics are right to warn that effective altruists reach some odd conclusions. Like the utilitarian philosophers before them, EAs boil ethical behaviour down to an optimisation problem. How can people bring about the best outcomes for humanity as a whole? Their calculus downplays local imperatives such as “keep promises” or “look after your family”. What matters is reducing suffering, impartially and everywhere.

I don’t doubt that there are a few EAs that “downplay local imperatives such as “keep promises” or “look after your family””, but any sensible form of utilitarianism would understand that society works better (even in utilitarian terms) when keeping promises and looking after your family are important values. Are babies supposed to raise themselves?

1. Given that the right has decided that it’s actually OK to be a corrupt politician, it was only a matter of time until they rehabilitated Nixon. The FT says this is happening:

In the ballroom of Washington’s Ritz-Carlton hotel this month, Republicans gathered to honour a beloved president who mounted “the greatest political comeback”. But the adulation of the mostly Maga crowd was not for Donald Trump; instead they were hailing Richard Nixon. With the help of Gen Z influencers, the US president who was forced to resign more than 50 years ago is being rapidly rehabilitated on the right, with even vice-president JD Vance urging supporters to reassess his legacy. “If Watergate happened tomorrow it would be like a 12-hour news story,” Vance said in June, referring to the wiretapping and hush money scandal that led to Nixon’s removal from office. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy”.

1. Bloomberg has some good news:

The populist revolution in the Anglo world is about to turn 10, as we near a decade since the US election of Donald Trump. And the world hasn’t been quite the same since.The rise of the populists that started in June 2016, with the UK’s rebellion against its European Union-hugging elites and a vote for Brexit, was supposed to hasten the death of globalization. Its manifestations, including rising immigration and depleted factory jobs, were both a main target of the movement and identified as a cause of the economic disaffection fueling the revolt.A decade on, there’s a paradox, though. This November, as Americans go to the polls for midterm elections in which Trump remains the leading character, they’ll do so in a global economy more integrated than it was in 2016. They’ll vote amid a Trump-endorsed artificial intelligence revolution that’s deeply reliant on globalization and in the shadow of bond markets responding to the mountain of debt left behind by a global pandemic. Despite all the trade barriers that have been erected, the safe economic wager increasingly looks like a world of enduring or even a deepening interdependence.

Trump has done one useful thing—he’s turned the Democratic Party against tariffs.

The Economist makes a similar observation:

What is there to show for a decade of post-liberal orthodoxy? Curiously little. Services are a bigger share of the economy. University enrolments are up; apprenticeships are down. If globalisation has gone too far then no one has told the British consumer, who, since the referendum, has taken to driving a Chinese Jaecoo and shopping through Shein and Temu.

1. The Economist says Brazil is blessed with a cornucopia of riches:

Brazil is a veritable El Dorado. As the rest of the world wrestles with a shortage of oil and of renewable alternatives, Brazil is overflowing with both. In August Petrobras, the state oil firm, discovered its first crude in the Equatorial Margin, the world’s fastest-growing oil province, off the north-eastern coast of South America. That will in time boost its already prodigious production from the “pre-salt” fields off its eastern coast. Fully 89% of Brazil’s electricity is supplied by renewables, mostly hydropower. Wind and solar energy have grown so fast the grid often cannot absorb all the output. The surplus green energy could power data centres and make Brazil a hub for the production of low-carbon steel and clean aviation and shipping fuel.The abundance in energy is matched in food. As recently as the 1970s severe hunger was common, driving millions of migrants, including a young Lula and his seven siblings, from the arid north-east to the mega-cities of the south. Then advances in agricultural research opened the interior up to cattle-ranching and farming. This year Brazil is set to overtake the United States as the world’s leading agricultural exporter. It is now king in beef, coffee, cotton, orange juice, soyabeans and sugar cane.

And more good news:

This cornucopia of energy, food and minerals made Brazil the biggest recipient of foreign direct investment among developing countries last year bar China. It attracted $77bn, far ahead of India’s $39bn.

But while India is growing fast, Brazil’s economy has been stagnating for decades. This is due to the fact that Brazil has one of the most dysfunctional governments in the developing world:

1. I need to ask for more “second opinions”:

Removing an inflamed appendix, an operation that around 5-10% of people have had at some point in their life, has turned out to be no better for most patients than a course of antibiotics. Trials comparing d ifferent surgical techniques have also revealed that cheaper and less complex operations can be more effective. Most striking, the data show that some widely used surgical procedures, such as spinal fusions and rotator-cuff repairs, have effects indistinguishable from placebo or non-surgical care such as physiotherapy.Worse, some types of surgery may do more harm than good. A trial in Britain found that prostate-cancer surgery had no effect on patient mortality 15 years on, but worsened sexual and urological problems. A Finnish trial of a common knee procedure, meanwhile, concluded that patients who had real surgery had more problems in the affected knee ten years on than those who had had sham surgery (anaesthesia followed by a superficial incision). David Ring, an orthopaedic surgeon at the University of Texas at Austin, reckons that most operations in his field may be unnecessary.

1. Polls suggest that Republicans are more likely than Democrats to favor the government taking an ownership stake in American companies:

I’m skeptical of public opinion polls, but many of my commenters believe them. If you do believe in polls, why do you think Republicans are more socialist than Democrats?

Meanwhile, “polls show” that 84% of Democrats agree that taxes are too high and 10% disagree. Are these polls accurate?

1. Here’s :

We live in an age of cynicism and nihilism. When someone endorses a good cause, we accuse them of virtue-signaling; if they donate to it, we accuse them of trying to whitewash their role in capitalism. We lionize corrupt politicians and insipid bling-wielding celebrities because, as people who have never made any claim to moral acceptability, they are the only people who can entirely escape the suspicion of faking it.This is idiotic and requires otherwise smart people to constantly contort themselves to figure out the latest less-than-entirely-depraved person’s angle. Maybe some people are so venal that they can’t imagine anyone truly caring about the welfare of humanity, but they should stop projecting this on everyone else.

I feel the same way. And I cannot tell whether the cynics that you see in blog comment sections believe everyone is corrupt because they are corrupt, or whether they believe they are honest and everyone else is corrupt. Either way, please cut back on the cynicism and nihilism. You don’t realize how bad it makes you look.

1. Here’s the Financial Times:

Two decades ago, Iran’s then-supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa against developing nuclear weapons, a religious prohibition that would underpin the regime’s insistence that its atomic energy ambitions were peaceful even as rampant enrichment put it on a collision course with the west. Now, however, amid the devastation of the US-Israeli war on Iran, a growing number of hardline politicians, analysts and MPs are calling for Tehran to drop this stance, leave the international Non-Proliferation Treaty and embrace nuclear weapons.

If you plan to launch a war to stop a country from developing nuclear weapons, then you need to reconsider. If you still decide to go ahead with the attack, you need to make damn sure you that win the war.

1. Everyone wants more housing. Mother Jones has a headline and subhead that perfectly encapsulate the currently housing debate:

Build, Baby, Build? California’s Hottest Races Are Battles About Housing.

Nithya Raman and Scott Wiener believe voters want more homes. Karen Bass and Connie Chan believe voters want more homes…somewhere else.

1. The protests in France are often viewed as “left wing”. Here’s the National Review:

Allegedly, the riots gripping France are about school quality or income inequality, but anyone with eyes and ears knows that’s all nonsense.

I have only one thing to add to the discussion. Many people don’t realize that France is arguably the most socialist country in the entire world. Not in the “communist” sense of socialist, rather in the sense of democratic socialism—Bernie Sanders ideology. Sanders often cites Denmark, but his actual views are nothing at all like ultra-neoliberal Denmark. But they are similar to France. Lots of public services, lots of income redistribution, lots of regulation. Please name a country that fits that description better than France. I can’t think of one.

And yet somehow this near perfect example of democratic socialism seems to have produced such a dystopian society that angry young men burn down historic buildings like this one (picture from Aratar):

Of course I’m being sarcastic, France is still a nice place. But its economic model is clearly dysfunctional. The protesters want more government spending, but what France needs to do—and eventually will do—is cut back on government spending.

1. Here’s Halina Bennet:

Florida’s Amendment 3 proposes increasing property-tax exemptions for homeowners who live in their homes. The amendment would raise the homestead exemption for non-school property taxes to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, with the amount indexed to inflation thereafter. Supporters say the amendment would help homeowners save money and make living in Florida more accessible, while opponents worry that reducing property tax revenue could make it harder for local governments to fund public services. A University of North Florida poll from July found support dropping from 61 percent to 45 percent once respondents were made aware of budget consequences: State economists project a nearly $12 billion annual loss for local governments.

In other words, 16% of Florida residents are complete idiots.

Paging Bryan Caplan. . . .

1. From Bloomberg:

Asked by Joey Amor,who lost his wife, Master Sergeant Nicole Amor, in the early days of the Iran conflict, about the “mistakes and a lot of fundamental failures that led up to that,” Vance suggested that he was unaware and out of the loop.“When you talk about failures that were that we were implicated, the administration, the Department of War, whoever you want to say, was implicated in, I want to know about that stuff. Because if there were failures, and I don’t doubt there were, I just, this literally the first time I’ve heard of this is this conversation, and I want to fix that stuff,” he said. “But I want to understand what we can do better and what those soldiers are seeing, because the part of the problem with this job, this job is an amazing honor, but you live in a bit of a bubble, and sometimes information doesn’t filter up to me.”

and this:

“You can make all kinds of criticisms of our policies and decisions, but I don’t see a single — I’ve not once seen evidence that Donald Trump has enriched himself,” Vance said.

and this:

“I love you too, sir,” Vance said recently in response to a rally attendant in Texas. “In a totally platonic way, to be clear. I’m the vice president, not James Talarico.”

Is this the JD Vance that wrote Hillbilly Elegy?

1. Here’s Jeffrey Blehar of the National Review:

What Ohioans are learning about now is the real reason Vivek Ramaswamy is a mismatch for the very idea of electoral politics: He’s an insincere and unlikable weasel.

I would replace “mismatch” with “ideal match”. Liz Wolfe has further thoughts:

It's not clear why Ramaswamy and other Republicans who've visited the state, campaigning on Ramaswamy's behalf, feel the need to stoop so low. Vice President J.D. Vance, for example, recently implied that Acton is a drunk.

Of course I’m being sarcastic, but isn’t it a bit late in the day to be outraged by American politics?

1. Mainstream economists told us that open market operations had little impact after IOR led to a system of “abundant reserves”. Monetarists like Peter Ireland showed why this is not true. As I noted in a recent post, monetarism doesn’t look true when there is IOR, but it is still true. These tweets from David Beckworth help to explain why:

In my book The Midas Paradox, I pointed to the irony of the US leaving the gold standard in 1933 (supposedly) because it was “running out of gold”. In fact, we had by far the world’s largest gold stock, and weren’t even close to running out. The actual problem was America’s legal minimum gold reserve ratios—set to assure that gold would be available in an emergency. Somehow the worst depression ever and the entire bank system shutdown for weeks was not an emergency—so instead we left gold. Thank god the Titanic did not face a regulation requiring the ship to carry 20 lifeboats on deck at all times.

1. Lots of news stories are far too long. This Bloomberg story left me wanting to know more:

Swindlers have persuaded Norwegians into buying gold and leaving it in the forest as part of a growing investment fraud, according to the country’s banking lobby.“Several” bank clients have spent “large sums” to purchase gold and then left it out in nature, following promises that “others will keep it safe while the value rises,” Finans Norge said in a statement Thursday, without specifying the amounts.

Maybe I should visit Norway. I like treasure hunts.

1. In my inbox I saw this CEPR paper abstract:

Does Easy Money Win Elections?

Governments press central banks for lower interest rates on the premise that easy money wins elections. We test this premise for 385 elections in 18 countries, 1900–2020, using exogenous interest rate changes. We find no evidence that monetary easing helps incumbents. At the point estimate, a typical easing leaves the incumbent’s vote share unchanged; the one-sided 95 percent confidence bound on the gain is 0.90 percentage points. Of 104 incumbent defeats, such an easing would have reversed none at the point estimate and 15 at the bound, all in close races. Easy money offers incumbents no reliable electoral return.

In my view, the following two questions are identical:

1. Does easy money win elections?
2. Does high inflation win elections?

Obviously the authors don’t see things that way—they look at interest rates. Thus when President Hoover cut interest rates from 6.5% in 1929 to 0.25% in 1932, he failed to achieve re-election. What would Milton Friedman say about Hoover’s “easy money policy”?

To be clear, I agree with the authors’ finding of no effect, which is consistent with the “never reason from a price change” perspective. And in fairness they try to avoid this problem by looking at “exogenous” rate changes, but nothing is actually exogenous.

Has Trump read this paper?

1. Excellent Antoine Levy twitter thread on the California wealth tax proposal. Hits all the key points. (Update: the proposition failed.)
2. Bloomberg reports:

The US is experiencing an unusually early flu season that started on the West Coast, leaving many people unprepared and suggesting that vaccines may not be an ideal match against the circulating virus.

It certainly wasn’t a good match for me, as I got severe flu (104, 40C) despite the vaccine.

1. I’m continually bombarded with email ads for The Free Press:

If this all sounds backward to you, you’re not alone. “Confused is how many people today feel about U.S. foreign policy,” Niall Ferguson writes in our lead story today.“For some people,” he continues, “the only possible explanation for all of this is that President Donald Trump is simply a crazed man-child emperor.” Those people would be wrong, he says. “To understand Trump’s approach to foreign policy, and particularly his counterintuitive approach to the war in Ukraine, you have to understand the debt he . . . owes to a 20th-century president: Richard Nixon.” Read Niall’s column to understand how the 47th president’s strategy borrows a page from the 37th’s—and the one key difference that may determine whether Trump ultimately succeeds.

Yeah, that really makes me want to subscribe to The Free Press. I don’t get enough sophistry defending the idiocy of an obviously deranged President. Sometimes things are just as they appear; there isn’t always a “method to the madness”. Trump isn’t playing 4-D chess. I prefer the earlier Ferguson who was outraged by Trump’s support of Putin in the Ukraine War.

1. I keep hearing about the amazing achievements of AI, which I have no reason to doubt. But I cannot help noticing that customer service is getting worse at a rapid rate. And now Google has dropped the extremely useful “films near me” search option, which is how I used to get information on what’s showing in my area. Instead of solving the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem how about developing a method for showing what films are in my area? (I checked with ChatGPT, and it confirmed my complaint.)
2. The Economist keeps missing the point:

One reason China has not closed the gap with America is the chronic weakness of domestic demand—the spending of China’s households, firms and government. The spending shortfall has put downward pressure on its currency and prices. As a consequence, China has become worryingly dependent on foreigners to buy its goods, even as it boasts of its technological self-reliance.The problem stems from a high household saving rate and a five-year slump in home-building. It also reflects a recent and alarming wobble in manufacturing and infrastructure investment. Firms hesitate to expand capacity because they worry about cut-throat competition for reluctant consumers. Local officials meanwhile seem preoccupied with tightening their belts ahead of a big Communist Party reshuffle.The best response would be to fix the property market and liberate the consumer through more generous pensions and child benefits.

No, the best response would be easier money and more capitalism.

1. I’d never heard of Patrick Ruffini, but Matt Yglesias has an amusing takedown.

1. Puritan busybodies on both the left and the right are now telling us that marijuana legalization was a mistake that the public has come to regret. In Massachusetts, voters were recently given a chance to go back to the old system of putting young mothers in prison for selling a few ounces of pot. Here’s what they decide (from the NYT):Don’t believe the Puritans.
2. Good news:

Ukraine’s dollar bonds jumped on a bet that a landslide victory by Democrats in US midterm elections will improve relations between Kyiv and Washington, helping the war-torn nation’s defense efforts.

32. When I was young, the typical reactionary was a grouchy old man who was unhappy with cultural change. The specific charge was that we’d become too “permissive” in the 1960s and 1970s. I was determined never to become a reactionary—but here I am. My specific objection is that society has become less permissive, too judgmental. A nation of scolds. Everyone seems to want to tell everyone else how to live their life. Relationships are now condemned because both people work in the same company, or because there’s an “age gap”, or the wrong ethnic group. A pregnant woman who has a single glass of wine must wear a scarlet letter—A for alcoholic. A parent that lets their children play outside without supervision is a child abuser.

I’ve learned that “reactionary” doesn’t mean what I once thought it meant—too conservative. The actual meaning is “out of step with the times”, a sort of nostalgia for one’s youth.

Objectively I’m wrong, as the “test of time” is the single most reliable method for establishing truth. But I don’t have to like it.

I recently saw some pundits complain that they became a conservative because they believed in liberty, free markets and a color-blind society, and now the GOP had changed. Decades ago, I recall other pundits complaining that they had become a liberal because they were socially permissive and opposed to racial discrimination, and then the Dems changed. Don’t be fooled, your tribe doesn’t actually agree with you. The same person who votes to legalize pot will turn around a week later and try to ban tobacco. Ninety percent of people on both the left and the right have no principles beyond “Everyone in the world should behave in a way that I approve of.”

1. This blog is supposed to be about happiness, but the past month has not gone well. In the unlikely even that readers wish to hear complaints from a grouchy old man, here’s a brief summary:

On October 12th I arrived in Tokyo for a one week vacation. The Shiomi Prince Hotel is my favorite hotel anywhere—very artistically designed and moderately priced. My first day in the hotel bath house I noticed a LED light showing 40 degrees (104) in the bath. Little did I know that this would be prophetic. My first complete day I went sightseeing. I avoided pictures of temples, instead focusing on things like the architecturally distinguished public toilets such as those seen in the film Perfect Day. My friend took me to dinner at a tiny but excellent sushi place in the Ginza.

And that was it for my vacation, as that evening I came down with the flu. I planned to stay a week in Tokyo, but ended up staying two weeks. (Remember the old joke: “Second prize—2 weeks in Philadelphia.”)

By Friday the 16th, I was so out of it I crawled out of bed and just flopped into the back of a taxi to St. Luke’s Hospital. I don’t think I’d ever had a 104 (40C) temperature, and I learned that it’s a very uncomfortable experience, even when “resting” on a hospital bed. A combination of feeling extreme thirst and so short of breath that I felt I was suffocating. It seemed like it took 30 points off my IQ, as I could not think clearly. The Japanese nurses all wore masks—clearly they had not read those far right websites that explain how “masks don’t work”. They were surprised when I told them I was traveling alone in Tokyo.

My wife was worried when she heard about my 104 temperature, and made an unscheduled trip from Beijing to Tokyo. She (correctly) understood that I’m not exactly an expert on taking care of myself. With Tamiflu, the fever gradually came down over a few days, but then started back up again. So 5 days later it was back to St Luke, where they diagnosed pneumonia. (They had tested for it the first visit, but it didn’t show up.)

My wife had recommended I take some antibiotics that she had with her right after she arrived in Tokyo, but I foolishly rejected her offer on the grounds that I had been tested for pneumonia. That’s what I mean about not being good at making medical decisions—I’m too trusting of doctors. On the second trip to St. Lukes they prescribed the exact same brand of antibiotics that she had offered me two days earlier. (In China, you can easily get antibiotics via mail order.)

The pneumonia was nowhere near as severe as the flu, but much longer lasting. I had to cancel my trip to Beijing and stay another week at the Shiomi Prince Hotel. The high fever seemed to affect my brain, as for several weeks I experienced most intense dreams I can ever recall, including horror, surrealism and extreme beauty. The next day I wondered if one of my dreams was actually as beautiful as I imagined. But then I realized there is no “fact of the matter”, as feelings of fear and beauty are entirely subjective. The fever was presumably triggering intense reactions in the brain, where an bland insurance salesman might have appeared as frightening as a monster, and a garbage dump might have appeared to be inexpressibly beautiful. Anyone else had this sort of experience?

Despite my disappointing vacation, I still view Tokyo as my favorite city. Indeed I view it as the absolute peak of human civilization. Even if in some sense places like Oslo and Zurich are “better”, nowhere else on Earth has 35 million people living in such harmony. Here’s a picture of one of the architect designed public toilets. The square also has a functioning phone both, a tiny police station, and a separated smoking area. And Tokyo has thousands of such conveniences all within easy walking distance.

Even if 90% of Tokyo’s modern architecture is bland, in absolute terms the quantity of elegantly designed modern buildings is still vast. Tokyo is a good rebuttal to critics who trash modern architecture.

After two weeks I was still pretty weak, but strong enough to complete the last 8 days of our planned Asian trip—four days in Shenzhen and then four days in Guangzhou (formerly Canton).

Shenzhen is similar to the wealthier parts of East Asia, both economically and culturally. When people speak of the “Japanification of China”, Shenzhen is exhibit A. The population is much younger than the rest of China. Everything seemed well integrated, as Shenzhen was built recently and is well planned. It’s the closest thing to Singapore in mainland China. Shenzhen is much less ugly than many Chinese cities, but still falls well short of Tokyo’s classy modern architecture.

Shenzhen’s subways are stunning:

Don’t be fooled by Shenzhen’s nominal GDP per capita of only $30,979; in PPP terms Shenzhen is an affluent city, at least twice the nominal income level. A 40-minute Didi ride cost us $6.60. Western tourists should view taxis as essentially free when making local travel decisions in China. Most cars seem electric. I thought the robot store was overrated. Drone delivery in the park was cool, however. A delicious meal for two where we each got the best lobster I’ve ever had, plus two excellent whole fish, pork soup, stir fried beef, and a simple veggie dish, all cost $27—total, not per person. (Tax and tip included.) That’s easily a $100 to $200 meal in Orange County. I’d suggest splurging on a luxury hotel that would be $1000 to $2000/night in NYC; it will be around $300 or $400 in China.

Guangzhou is just 29 minutes away by high-speed rail (which BTW is safer than European HSR), but otherwise feels like almost a different country. Web sites available in Shenzhen (including Substack) are blocked in Guangzhou. The city is dirtier, more polluted, more crowded, more chaotic—more like the old China. Shenzhen taxis require you wear a seat belt, while Guangzhou taxis don’t care and often lack a functional seatbelt. They even speak a different language in Guangzhou—Cantonese, not the Mandarin in widespread use in Shenzhen. After a few days I realized I’d overreacted a bit; we were in an older section of Guangzhou and the newer areas were fairly impressive. Nonetheless, the two cities really are quite different, with Shenzheners seeming more polite and chill.

Guangzhou’s White Swan Hotel was China’s first 5-star hotel. It’s still excellent (and inexpensive) but as with almost everything in China the service can be annoying. Indeed, service is China’s weak point. This trip it really struck me how uneven China’s development is. We arrived in a stunning high speed rail station and we left Guangzhou via the most beautiful airport I’ve ever seen in my life (and yes, I’ve been to Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Singapore, etc.)

These infrastructure achievements are legitimately impressive. And yet much of China is disappointedly unattractive, with subpar service. And it’s not an East Asian cultural thing, as Japan has extremely good service and the level of service in Shenzhen is often closer to Japan than the rest of China. So China can and should do much better.

I was interested in visiting China’s Pearl River Delta because it is unlike any other place on Earth. Wikipedia says the world’s biggest metro area is either Jakarta or Tokyo, with 30 to 40 million people. But the PRD has a population of 86 million and it’s not clear to me why it should not be viewed as a single metropolitan area. Perhaps it’s a bit too spread out. This region has the top two cities for skyscrapers over 200 meters, and three of the top six:

BTW, SARS1 began in Guangzhou and SARS2 began in Wuhan. People who know nothing about China seemed to view Covid beginning in Wuhan as some sort of weird coincidence. Actually, it is exactly the sort of giant southern Chinese city where you’d expect it to begin.

I finally got home yesterday—and feel I need a vacation to recover from my “vacation”.

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